Feeling Groovy

PoliticsPA ^ | 8/30/05 | salena zito

[salenaz]

Feeling Groovy

By Salena Zito

Take any thought, urban legend or hot button issue, post it on a blog and within a flash it is viral. Within 24 hours, sometimes less, it can be Googled. Little Green Footballs, an off the beaten path Blog-became a household word faster than-the-speed-of light with it’s mock up of a word document. Now known as Rathergate.

The fine art of word-of-mouth has gone bionic with the eclipse of the Internet. Phrases, slang’s and theories that were once migrated into society at speeds the equivalent of a snail, are now instantly part of our daily environment. What would have once taken months to formulate and become part of our culture now has the ability to become over-kill by two clicks of a mouse.

Although the political world was slow to adapt to using the Internet, once it did, it become no holds bar.

Think about it, had Ross Perot tapped into this technology he may have been able to make that quantum leap into mainstream.

Although Howard Dean has been used as the poster boy for the success of the Internet, in his new life as the DNC chair he has become a victim of the viral methods that thrust him into the limelight.

Chew on this; Dean’s greatest strengths have been his in-your-face rhetoric. The blogosphere has been more than happy to blast his never to humble opinions to infinity and back. His non-stop verbal assault on Republicans and their core electorate was a daily headline for the Drudge Report. Eventually the power brokers of the Democratic Party eunuch-ed his mouthpiece. The Internet had taken every word that he uttered and wallpapered the blogosphere and traditional news with his over the edge message. Not so swell when you are trying to woo these voters back to the Democratic Party.

The subtleties of word-of-mouth are sometimes missing when they are kicked into over drive. Lost is the human measurement of a movement, or how human behavior adapts to a low laying buzz. As typical with anything we do as an American Culture, we take it, own it, make it better then ride it hard. We are all still basically cowboys ready to conquer uncharted territories and call them our own. Look what we did with Europe’s Reality TV. One day it is a pilot show on an obscure channel, 5 minutes later it is All-Reality- TV-all-of-the-time.

The Internet has been life alternating for the wide world of campaigns. But sometimes you have to take a step back and remember the roots of where the blogosphere came from.

A blog is no different than a story passed on from one person to another, with a bit of hyperbole added with each pass. It would be a shame if we lost the fine art of word of mouth completely from our American Culture. From Native Americans, African Villages and European clans - we are all melted into a society that has traditionally relished its history of passing our distinct cultures and dialects among the wide-open spaces of our country.

The same goes for slang. Take the word “Groovy”. While its cousin “Cool” has consistently maintained a presence in the American Lexicon. Groovy, despite a similar origin, has had a markedly different sociolinguistic history. Both originated in the 1920’s and both were used primarily by the subculture of the musical underground. While cool has maintained it’s cool, groovy still retains its derisive reference to the hippie movement. It took groovy 30 years to become mainstream sans the Internet. Once mainstream it lived a good long ten years before attitudes associated with hippies and over kill via the sugary Brady Bunch put it to rest.

It would be interesting to see how viral groovy could become again. Combining good old-fashioned word of mouth with the muscle of blogs could shed some compelling results. Sometimes marrying two good methods can temper a good thing gone haywire. The Internet has served the political world well, but it always tips on the edge of going overboard. Caution and wisdom are always well served with a mix of risk and edge.

So if you are feeling a little scientific today and want to test the powers of your own personal web, drop the word groovy into your conversations-and your emails. See who holds the power in your circle; people, the Internet – hopefully it is a little of both.

[ovrtaxt]

I say groovy all the time. It's totally tubular. Peace out.

[hombre_sincero]

Is this the opening shot of the new ANTI-blogger blog by the MSM?

Subtle.

[Cicero]

No, you can't become famous by opening a blog and posting any kind of junk you like. Little Green Footballs earned its reputation over a long period of time, well before its Rathergate post.

[thulldud]

Right arm, brother.

[Captainpaintball]

I like the word 'douche'. Can we try to make that word more popular?

[Cicero]

Connie Willis's comic science-fiction book, "Bellwether," suggests that certain people have the mysterious power to move the culture and determine what is in and what is out. If "groovy" suddenly becomes popular among the Valley Girls again, we will know whom to thank.

In the case of a true bellweather, it is not necessary to build up a reputation laboriously, piece by piece. It just happens.

I warmly recommend all of Willis's books, even to readers who are not inveterate SF fans. She's a very fine writer.

[salenaz]

thanks, i will check it out